IT managers regularly use various network and system management products to maintain enterprise-wide administration of computer systems. The system management products can include various programs and hardware that enable IT managers to engage in various tasks, such as the monitoring of servers, security management, and software inventory. In large systems, however, it is difficult to determine which applications are installed and regularly used on specific servers within the system. Ineffective monitoring of such applications can slow down the system, as redundant applications may be installed on the same server, while sparse installation of applications throughout the remaining servers within the network can lead to other performances issues, such as long delays and processor overload.
Previous solutions to track application implementation include the mapping of the entire IT infrastructure. However, such solutions required IT managers to manually input and update all the applicable data. Such solutions are therefore hard to scale for large infrastructure or maintain after a high number of changes.